When it's time to move on

I was going to title this post: When It's Time to Cut Your Losses but in this writing life, I don't think there really are any losses. Call me an optimist but I believe that, when it comes to pursuing a passion or a talent or even a career, nothing is wasted.

We learn from every experience. Good or bad. And if you're lucky enough to be a writer (or a quilter!), you can use everything eventually.

Some of you may have noticed that my agent has changed recently. Unlike the first time I signed, I haven't posted a huge hullabaloo of yahoo. For many writers, switching agents is viewed a bit like getting a divorce. The second signing is like the second wedding -  the bride wearing a business suit instead of a white gown, only family present. However, this analogy doesn't quite hold true because in this case, the business suit is actually more applicable. The agent-author relationship IS a business one. It isn't until death-do-you-part. Break-ups happen all the time.

But why, you ask, did you and your former agent end your relationship?

One word: incompatibility. Our working styles, our expectations, our method of communicating,  didn't mesh. Fortunately, we both figured it out at the same time. And we parted with lots of cyber hugs, promises to stay in touch when good things happen, and best wishes...because she is a great agent and a wonderful person. I am a very lucky girl to have worked with her.

And I am beyond thrilled to have Andrea Somberg at my back. She is uber-experienced, has the reputation of being one of the nicest agents in the business, and her clients cannot say enough good things about her. I am a very lucky girl to be working with her.

This experience has made me think of several emails I've received recently from writers who aren't getting any query love for their current MS. They've peddled it for months. They've rewritten it forty-zillion times. They enter contests, plead for betas, read writing books. And still: nothing. I love this book so much! they write to me.  How do I know when it's time to give it up?

The publishing journey is such an individual path, it's different for every person. I gave up querying a novel after only three months. It took only eight months for me to figure out it wasn't working with my previous agent. While I just said that nothing is ever wasted, the one exception to that principle is: TIME.

So in order to help those of you pondering the great "rewrite-or-move-on" question, here are several very general signals that indicate it might be time to move on:

1. If your request rate is really low - like 1-3 percent.
2. The market is saturated with concepts like yours.
3. When entering contests, commentors are more critical than admiring.
4. This is your very first ever completed MS.
5. You just want to "get it out there!" The intricacies of all those editing expectations are more frustrating than freeing.*
6. You really believe you've made your MS the best it can be.*

*If #5 and #6 are true for you, self-publishing may be the way to go.

What time-to-move-on signals have you experienced that I missed? Share them in the comments!

 Have a great week.

Friday funnies - Aug. 24

I love the How It Should Have Ended Series. Especially this one:

 

 

 

 

Thinking of getting a beta or a critique? Check out YAStands - link in the sidebar - there's a list of us who love to beta. Then don't do this:

 

 

 

 

Discourged napping is totally missing from my process. *resolves to add*

 

 

 

 I always knew my cats weren't from here:

 

Lol via Blogsoup



 

 Have a great weekend!

 

 

 

Reality Check

The title of this post should more acurately be called: when you can't figure out why you're not getting any (or more) requests.  But that's a bit bulky for a title.

Although I've been blogging only since last summer, I've noticed there isn't a bloghop that goes by without evidence of the awesome writerly community online. Comments are filled with encouragement and statements of how talented we all are. Taken from a nurturing standpoint, this is wonderful.
 
Taken from a business/reality standpoint, it's awful. And here's why.

Say you're an emerging writer who has a great idea for a first book. You've stayed up late writing so fast, your fingers smoke. You follow blogs that cover technique, you track your favorite authors. You've started a blog and are dipping into the Twitter waters. You critique, comment, contest and campaign your little heart out. You've even sent your MS off to a few betas who all respond with hearty applause, so you gird your loins and start writing a query. A few months - and hopefully revisions - later and off it flies to agent inboxes.

And...nada. You might get a request or two out of every fifty queries sent but after that? Crickets. Or rejections. And those few requests end up months later in form rejections.

Because, despite what all your readers have said (and they're great people, they want you to succeed) you're not ready. Your idea has too much competition, your MS rambles like an out-of-control freight train and you are the rule, not the exception. It's the equivalent of going in public with your fly down and nobody telling you.  Or having something green in your teeth and everybody smiling vaguely while avoiding looking directly at you. Or....well, you get the picture. Your blogging buddies, your betas, your family, aren't telling you the truth - either because they can't see it or they don't know.

You realize this in stages as the months go by. First denial, then anger, then tears - all the stages of grief encompass you and you wonder in despair if you just DON'T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES. *sob*

Here's the thing: you don't. Not yet. Not with this MS. Not with this economy/trends in the market/writing abilities you have right now.  I underlined that for emphasis because it's everything. 

This is the point when many emerging writers go for self-publishing. And I'm not knocking this. There are success stories every few months of self-pubbers who go on to land a publishing contract (and thousands more who sell ten copies.) If that's your choice, go for it. You'll learn a lot.

For those of you whose dream it is to go the traditional route, know this: Just because your current MS has more rejections than Jack Black at a super model convention doesn't mean your next story is doomed.

All these rejections are telling you now is to try harder. READ. Write something else, maybe a short story or a nonfiction article. Hone your craft by going shorter, learning how to trim, focus, target, plot. READ. Find a beta who isn't scared of hurting your feelings and will tell you what's wrong. READ. Grow a thick skin so you don't get offended, so you can actually learn from those comments.  Be suspicious of kind comments because, let's face it, you're not Shakespeare.  (oh..and READ. Set a goal for at least a book a week. I won't tell you how many I read bc it is kind of embarrassing in a holy-cow-she-has-no-life way.)

You will get better with relentless practice. In the meantime, the market might shift so your next MS is now the trend.

Realize this. Own it. Move on. There's a reason most professional writers look more like the Velveteen Rabbit than Barbie. It's just part of being real.

Embracing the Critique Grinch

Let me count the ways the Critique Grinch makes a grab for our writerly confidence:

• An unkind comment is made on your blog. The writer accuses you of being inaccurate and requests that, from now on, only 'real writers' write posts.
• A critiquer rips apart your first draft, then uses one of your writing weaknesses as the subject of her next blog post.
• An agent sends a form reject for the MS she's had for two months and gives zero reasons for rejection.
• A friend/parent/relative gets a puzzled look whenever you mention your writing and wonders why you don't take up crafting instead because "at least then you'd have something useful when you're finished."
• You read a fabulous blog post on setting and realize with dismay you've completely forgotten to add one element of it in the MS you just sent off to your no. 1 agent.

Whether it comes from a stranger, a beta, a professional, someone who's supposed to love you, or YOU, there are so many ways we can lose our joy of writing. Blogger Alex Cavanaugh has even started a blog hop  called the 'Insecure Writers Group' that meets monthly to shore up the crumbling walls of confidence.  It's no secret writer-folk are synonymous with needy-folk, because we need praise, help, companionship, encouragement. Writing is so solitary and ephemeral. It's very easy to get sucked into the vortex of despair.

This is especially true for the newbies. At the heart of rejecting criticism (whether it's justified or not) is the false belief that real, professional writers are above the common mistakes, whether it be punctuation,  spelling, paragraph development or story arc. 

If only!

As someone who was a professional writer for many years, I learned two things:

1. Criticism is necessary. The harshest criticism is often the best to help us grow. It's like really powerful fertilizer that can burn but also produces fabulous results when used properly.

2. The difference between a 'real' writer and a hobbyist is twofold - a real writer seeks criticism, both to get better and because he/she needs the writing to be shared. And a real writer can't stop. Not really. There may be a hiatus here or there but the need to write seeps through life like water seeps through sand. It's a compulsion, a weird personality tic that many would trade in a moment for, say, a gift for languages, organization, crafting, anything else that appears to be more useful.

So if you're like me and you can't stop, try looking forward to criticism. Don't be a masochist about it and don't be scared either. Words are powerful but in the end, they're just words. You get to choose which ones you let sink into your brain and which ones bounce off.